Costly conclusion to tussle over former BCM mayor’s estate

Ntombekhaya Maclean, the widow of former Buffalo City Metro mayor Sindisile Maclean, is faced with a formidable legal bill after judge Murray Lowe ruled in the high court in Makhanda that she is liable for wasted expenses in a court challenge over her late husband’s estate.

Ntombekhaya took on Sindisile’s six adult children in a bitter battle to secure a better inheritance outcome for her family — but backed off after running out of funds to pay her own legal expenses.

In a double blow, she is now saddled with costs for a matter that continued for months after she held she had withdrawn it.

The Eastern Cape ANC stalwart died on August 26 2020 of Covid-19 complications.

Soon after, Ntombekhaya received a letter from Komani based Matiwane Attorneys, representing six of Sindisile’s adult children.

Naming an executor for his estate, the letter informed Ntombekhaya they would meanwhile remove all of Sindisile’s assets for safekeeping, including half the couple’s furniture, and three vehicles.

Former MPL Sindisile and communications specialist Ntombekhaya met in the Eastern Cape provincial legislature and were married in November 2005.

Last year, she sought to have their original marriage contract scrapped, asking the court to acknowledge what she said was a de facto community of property arrangement.

The couple’s antenuptial contract excluded accrual; a community of property arrangement would compensate her for the support she said she had provided to Sindisile during the long periods when he was unemployed.

Two months after Sindisile died, Johannesburg attorneys Mageza Raffee Mokoena agreed to represent Ntombekhaya in pursuing this claim.

But in an email on January 26 this year, Ntombekhaya told them she was terminating their services.

As far as she was concerned, Ntombekhaya said later, that meant she was withdrawing her application.

Mageza immediately called the attorney representing the Maclean adult children and informed him his firm was no longer representing Ntombekhaya — but did not withdraw the application.

As a result, it remained in the court system, attracting the associated costs.

Last week, in the high court, Ntombekhaya sought to hold Mageza liable for those considerable expenses.

But that would have meant declaring Mageza “sufficiently egregious or grossly negligent as to warrant a costs order de bonis propriis”.

These are the circumstances in which an applicant’s legal representative could be ordered to pay their client’s costs and Lowe warned: “Such an award is unusual and not easily granted. Negligence in a serious degree is required.”

The judgment handed down in the high court in Makhanda on Thursday dealt only with costs.

It ruled that terminating a lawyer’s mandate and withdrawing a case are two different issues and that if Ntombekhaya did not understand that, Mageza was not to blame.

The couple’s antenuptial contract excluded accrual; a community of property arrangement